The city of
Amorium, located in Phrygia in the highlands of Asia Minor, has been under
excavation and systematic research for almost three decades. A large number of scientific
publications, articles in peer-reviewed journals, and a special series
dedicated to Amorium, the “Amorium Reports” that number already five volumes, have
seen the light as the main research products of this archaeological activity
along with considerable amount of popularizing guide books. The impact of
Amorium excavation has affected considerably the contemporary archaeological
approach to Byzantine Early Medieval and Middle Byzantine cities.

Amorium has
also been the stage of international cooperation for many years, and in this
way it continues to bring together scholars from Turkey with colleagues from
across the world. Many of our historical questions though are still in an early
stage, seeking for answers that the continuation of the excavation and new
research will provide. At the same time innovative archaeological methods (e.g.
geophysical survey, satellite imagery, LIDAR modelling) and modern approaches
are being applied at Amorium, making the project one of the pioneers in the
field of Byzantine archaeology.

Aim of this
workshop is to bring together the members of Amorium Excavations team to confer
on the most recent field work and state of research. At the same time, we hope
to further establish a dialogue about Amorium with other scholars of Byzantium that
face similar historical and archaeological questions. In the center of such a
discourse stand the challenges of Byzantine historical archaeology and our
understanding of the period between the 7th and 11th c.
AD, and the evolution of Byzantine urbanism with the formation of “new” or
renewed urban centers as provincial capitals, this largely being the essence of
the new thematic system. A process evident in the field, but also underlined in
the historical sources. In result in our two-day thematic workshop all kind of
questions on material culture, architecture, landscape archaeology, textual
history and many more concerning the Middle Byzantine cities will be addressed.